Friday, July 2, 2010

100 writing mistakes to avoid

I got a review copy of the book ‘100 writing mistakes to avoid’ by Maeve Maddox two days ago. As is my nature, I quickly scanned through before reading – from the end downwards.


I must say that the first thing that struck me was the choice of font and colour; they truly stood out and made for an easy read.

Thirty minutes later I looked up from my screen, a smile of intense satisfaction playing around my lips. It is not every day that one encounters gold nuggets, something this book truly is.

Yes, this book aside from being timely is one of those ones that you would readily recommend to friends, but dread giving out. Like the author said in the introduction “it is for writers who want to avoid the most common errors of written English without spending a lot of time looking it up.”

The 100 errors are arranged according to type: spelling mistakes, usage Mistakes, grammar mistakes and punctuation mistakes. All in an easily accessible way.

The errors covered are many of those that cause writers a lot of embarrassment, especially when they appear in works that have passed through the editing process. The book will surely not answer the questions of anyone not familiar with English parts of speech and other basic terms, but it sure would become a very good companion for writers that find it hard commiting things to memory.

For me, I think it is one of the handiest books on the subject matter I have seen so far. I recommend this to anybody serious about error-free writing.

the book is available at http://www.dailywritingtips.com/

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